The nightbird

Do you remember this from the early 70's ?
“The flutter of wings, the shadow across the moon, the sounds of the night, as the Nightbird spreads her wings and soars, above the earth, into another level of comprehension, where we exist only to feel. Come, fly with me, Alison Steele, the Nightbird, at WNEW-FM, until dawn.”

I thought of the Nightbird last week as I wandered through my house at 2 am, warming myself some milk and trying to decide what soothing activity would send me back to dreamland. Ah, the soft, sultry voice of Alison Steele would do it, reciting poetry over Andean flute music and playing Riders on the Storm by The Doors, if it were raining. She was the popular voice of progressive rock starting in the late 60's and played whatever she wanted on her show.

Now I am my own Nightbird, creeping around in the wee hours. Peace prevails in the house and it feels like it's completely my world--my kingdom of the night.The clutter recedes in the background. The low lighting blurs the colors and shapes.  The full moon through the window is high and partly obscured by clouds, swiftly passing over it, so that it really does look blue.  I swear I've heard the fairies tapping very gently at my window or was that suggestion lifted directly from a play I saw last Saturday?

Every so often I get these weeks where I'm turned around--day for night, night for day. It starts with being on the computer too late in the evening and going to bed with the neurons still firing. I toss and turn and then silently open the bedroom door, hug the banister and disappear downstairs.  One night I started watching a Turkish movie with subtitles, which I thought would be sleep inducing, only to get caught up in the story until it ended at 4am!

I can't decide if sleeping with the window open helps or not. I love the loud, steady, one note thrum of the crickets and insects at high decibels, punctuating the August night with exotic chirping calls and buzzing answers. Who is out there? Tropical birds...giant frogs...cicadas who missed their cue to return underground?  It's a soothing symphony; yet, I'm also awakened by the sprinklers coming on at 3 am and the newspaper delivery at 5. The seemingly permanent construction crews in my neighborhood start at 8. So maybe windows shut is a better option.

My insomnia usually stops as quickly as it starts and I return after a week or so to a normal routine with no explanation. Perhaps I need to pick up Goodnight, Moon or is it time for Lunesta?

Insomnia

One of the minor annoyances of chemotherapy (or maybe it's just a consequence of my age) is that I have bouts of insomnia. No rhyme or reason to it. Sometimes I just get into a bad pattern that involves tossing and turning, rearranging pillows, roaming the house at 2 am, switching bedrooms, trying out the couch downstairs, reading, watching movies, drinking warm milk, or practicing yoga breathing, before I finally drift back to sleep.  Then I sleep later in the morning, shift all meals 2 or 3 hours later, go to bed at midnight because I'm not tired and repeat the whole process.  The bedtimes get later and later, so you can see the result is akin to being a college kid and subbing day for night or being a world traveler, unsure of what time zone you're really in. Three o'clock--must be lunch time!  Six o'clock--nap before dinner!

After a week or so of this nonsense, I return to a more normal sleep schedule, highlighted by a marathon 12 hour sleep to start, just to reset the internal body clock.

What's strange is that I miss my crazy nights sometimes.  There's something about creeping around your house at 3 am that gives you a sense of peace and well being. I've been playing with a new toy that Gary got for Christmas--binoculars with a camera inside. The moon has just been so bright the last few nights, that I've been looking out my window in the wee hours and clicking away. The only problem is I'm so used to digital previewing that it's weird to have to wait until you download the pictures to your computer to see if any came out. (and I do wait for daylight to do that).  I overestimated how much light the moon was actually shedding on objects below, so got a set of very black photos the other night. Here's the best of the batch:

Moon peeking through the tree branches

Oh, yeah, and I know, before anyone states the obvious, that the key to returning to sleep is to NOT engage in any activities that will stimulate the brain and wake you up more.  Seems like running from one window to another is not exactly a soothing, back to sleep ritual.

My ritual when I was a little kid was to listen to the same record every night.  For some reason, the record player, which was a sizeable piece of furniture--mahogany cabinet with a heavy, polished lid--was in my room.  I don't remember all the songs that were on that 78--maybe because I always fell asleep before the record ended-- but I'm pretty sure  these catchy tunes were included :

(have a listen, courtesy of You Tube)

Mr. Sandman 

Buttons and Bows

They're very upbeat for bedtime lullabies, but obviously my parents were on to something because it worked for me then and I'm wondering if the Chordettes and Dinah Shore will work the magic for me now.  May just have to try that out.